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Tag: china

How to Create an Intentional Daily Routine — During Quarantine or Anytime!

Creating a daily routine is essential even if we weren’t quarantined, sheltering in place, and physically distancing from one another. (Has anyone coined “Quar-routine” yet?) 

In a previous episode called “50 Ways to Create a Meaningful Life,” I promised I would break out some of the items into their own individual episodes, and so here we are. 

In this episode, I share 10 ways I organize my day so as to ensure that I have as joyful and meaningful a day as possible. (And when I falter…how a routine helps me re-set the day.) 

I can’t wait to hear about your routine! Take a listen, and drop me a line. 

Animals and Coronavirus: Poaching and Eating Wild Animals

Join me for this Food for Thought podcast series that examines what the covid-19 / coronavirus virus means for non-human animals and the habits, laws, and policies that affect our treatment of them. The first episode in the series focuses on wild animals who are poached, farmed, and eaten.

The source for the recent coronavirus outbreak that has led to a devastating worldwide pandemic has been linked to a market in mainland China, where wild animals are sold and killed for human consumption. China has said it will permanently ban the consumption of animals, but many questions remain.

  • Will this virus put an end to the illegal wildlife trade in China and Southeast Asia?
  • Will the wildlife farms in China reopen once the pandemic is over?
  • Will this be the end to live animal markets and wet markets where wild and domesticated animals are sold and killed for meat?
  • Will China close the loopholes (such as exemptions for fur and Traditional Chinese Medicine) that exist in their bans on wildlife poaching and consumption?
  • Will good come out of this devastation?
  • Is there anything you can do to help make a difference?

Listen to this listener-supported episode as I attempt to answer these questions. (become a supporter at patreon.com/colleenpatrickgoudreau)

HOW TO LISTEN / SUBSCRIBE TO FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

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Issues addressed in this episode

  • Traditional Chinese Medicine
  • Illegal Wildlife Trade
  • Poaching
  • Wet Markets
  • Live Animal Markets
  • Bear Bile Farming / Farms
  • Wild Animal Farming 
  • Wildlife Protection Laws in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and other Southeast Asian countries
  • Covid-19 / Coronavirus Pandemic
  • Infectious Diseases
  • Zoonotic Diseases 

Coronavirus and the Lethal Gifts of Livestock

With the Coronavirus (or Covid-19) wreaking havoc on our society, we thought it was timely to rebroadcast this episode. Coronavirus is one of many zoonotic diseases — diseases that jump from non-human animals to human animals.  

A “wet market” in Wuhan, China, is most likely where this strain of the coronavirus started. At many “wet markets,” meat, poultry, and seafood are sold alongside live animals for consumption. It is our very consumption of animals and their products that has bestowed upon us what Guns, Germs, and Steel author Jared Diamond calls the “lethal gifts of livestock.” Our abuse of nature comes full-circle and at a heavy price for both the consumer and the consumed.

Being animals ourselves, it makes sense that we share many of the same diseases as our non-human cousins. We aren’t – after all – plants. We aren’t at risk for catching aphids or sooty mold or downy mildew.

In fact, many of the major killer pandemics we’ve been plagued with were acquired from non-human animals. Here are just a few:

we got tuberculosis from cattle, influenza from pigs and birds, whooping cough from pigs and dogs, smallpox from cattle, and of course cowpox from cows. Even HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is believed to have been first transmitted to humans through the butchering and consumption of infected chimpanzees.

Are You Writing the Future for Animals?

I recently returned from a dream trip to Rwanda seeing mountain gorillas, golden monkeys, and chimpanzees — all of whom are threatened due to human activity. But still I have hope.

Afterwards, we saw lions, giraffes, impalas, warthogs, ostriches, hippos, zebras, and elephants in Botswana, a country that banned trophy hunting but is still dealing with poaching. But still I have hope. In fact, we were in Botswana when we heard the news that China is banning the legal trade in ivory, which is a thing to celebrate although the work is not done. It never is.

Even as I stood awe-struck looking at the animals characterized as “exotic,” I thought of the animals in my Oakland backyard—the ones considered mundane—the deer, the squirrels, the foxes, opossums, raccoons, skunks, crows, and jays. Rather than pay to view them, people pay to eradicate them, but nonetheless, they’re valuable to me, to themselves, to the entire ecosystem.

I thought of our state’s coyotes, mountain lions, and wolves—all of whom are demonized by private ranchers who use public land to graze their livestock, then blame the predators for being who they are.

I thought of our nation’s animals, who will be negatively impacted if the current administration makes good on its promises to support fossil fuels, curtail plans to cut carbon emissions, withdraw from the Paris Agreement, construct oil pipelines, dismantle the Endangered Species Act, and build a wall that will impact the lives and migratory habits of native species.

And still I have hope. While I daily urge our federal congresswomen and congressmen to pass legislation that protects animals and reject legislation that harms them, we have much work to do on a state and local level, both of which can get neglected when our fears are focused on an animal-, environment-, and human-hostile White House.

I have hope because possibility dwells in uncertainty. The darkness that lies before us is not inevitably bleak; it’s just unwritten. And we are its authors. We have a future to write—for the animals near and the animals far. For the human and the non-human animals. And I intend to write it.

Will you join me?